“Not that I intended to drop it. It isn’t my habit to drop things that affect my interest, business or personal. I would certainly have done my best to get hold of that record with a voice on it supposed to be mine. I did in fact take certain steps. But a different face was put on the matter when I read in the paper this morning that a beautiful young woman had been murdered at the Dundee place at Katonah. It seemed to me there were three possibilities. It might have nothing to do with Dick or you. Or it might have been the woman who had imitated your voice and she had tried blackmail. Or it might have been the woman for whose sake Dick was framing a case against you—”
“My sister never knew Mr. Dundee!” Heather cried. “And she had only just got back—”
She stopped when Hicks squeezed her arm. “Let him finish,” Hicks said. “He’s doing a swell job.”
Vail paid no attention. “As I say, there were those possibilities. At any rate, I intended to find out if I was likely to be involved, however indirectly, in anything as unsavory as a murder. When this man Hicks called at my office yesterday to try some kind of a trick with my help, I had foolishly ordered him out. This morning I made inquiries about him and decided to go to see him. While I was there George Cooper came in — I recognized him, of course, from his picture in the paper — and demanded that Hicks tell him the whereabouts of a phonograph record with his wife’s voice on it! Not only that, he repeated the first words of the record, and they were the same as those which Brager had told me began the sonotel record of the conversation between you and me! Hicks denied any knowledge of such a record, and Cooper left.”
“And then you left by request,” Hicks muttered.
Vail ignored him. “So I knew beyond question that the murdered woman was the one who had imitated your voice, and undoubtedly her murder was connected with that fact. Since an imitation of my own voice was recorded along with hers, it was up to me to do something. My first impulse was to go to the police, and I drove to White Plains. On the way there I decided it would be desirable to see what I could find out before going to the police, and with that in mind I intended to phone Brager and arrange to have a talk with him if possible, when by a stroke of luck I ran into him on Main Street in White Plains.”
Vail stirred in his chair, paused, appeared to hesitate, and then went on. “I’m being careful here. I’m telling this to four of you. I had a long talk with Brager, and found that his opinion of the matter roughly coincided with mine. He didn’t know where the sonotel record was, but suspected that Ross Dundee had sneaked it out of his father’s office to protect you. The first thing to do was to get hold of that record, and since Cooper had evidently heard it, he was the man to go for. He had left Hicks’s place with the expressed intention of going to Katonah. Brager being completely ineffectual outside of a laboratory, and not wishing to put in an appearance at Katonah myself, we arranged that Brager should return there, get Cooper aside, and persuade him to go to meet me at a spot not far off. Brager decided on the spot, a secluded roadside beyond a place called Crescent Farm. He left to return to Katonah, and I drove to the spot, arriving a little before five o’clock. I waited there, keeping out of sight, for nearly six hours, having no idea, naturally, what was happening. I got damned impatient, and I got suspicious. When it fell dark I got a pistol that I carry in my dash compartment and put it in my pocket. When a car approached, which happened only twice on the deserted road, I concealed myself — after all, the woman whose voice was on that record with what was supposed to be my voice had been murdered. Finally a car came from the direction I expected, and stopped just behind my car. I crouched in front of the hood, and when their footsteps came up alongside my car, I stood up with the pistol in my hand. One of them came at me right over the car, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with my head buzzing.”
Ross said to his mother, “That’s when I knocked him cold. I grabbed the gun and beaned him with it.”
“D’Artagnan,” Hicks grunted. “Where’s the gun?”
“Right here.” Ross took it from his pocket.
“Let me see it.”
Ross hesitated.
“Don’t be silly,” his mother told him. “Give it to him. Is it loaded?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t look.”
Hicks did look. “It is,” he announced. He put the muzzle to his nose and sniffed several times, then slipped the pistol into his pocket. “People who jump over cars at men with guns,” he stated, “are too brave for this world, so they usually get sent to another one. Continue the explanation, Vail. It’s fascinating.”
Vail spoke as before to Mrs. Dundee. “So far, Judith, I have told you facts. I have not gone into theory. But I ought to, I’ll have to, to make you understand what I meant when I spoke of the vital necessity of a very careful and very rigorous discretion. Only before I do that I need some information myself. Doubtless Hicks can give it to me.”
“It’s yours for the asking,” Hicks declared. “What, for instance?”
“First about Cooper. He was shot?”
Hicks nodded. “While you were waiting there on the road for him but keeping yourself concealed. At six thirty-five Brager and Miss Gladd were in the office of the laboratory and heard a shot. They went outdoors and found Cooper with a hole in his temple, dead. Brager thought he heard movement in the woods, but saw no one.”
“Where were the rest of you?”
“Mrs. Dundee was in New York. So was I. Father and son were around the place somewhere. Outdoors.”
“Together?”
“No.”
“Then...” Dundee paused, and shook his head. “Where is that sonotel record?”
“Safe.”
“In whose possession?”
“If I say it’s safe, whose do you think? Mine.”
“Good,” Vail said approvingly. “I was afraid the police had it. Did you get it from young Dundee?”
“I got it by a combination of ingenuity, intrepidity, and dumb luck. From whom or where is for the present my business.”
“It doesn’t matter so long as you have it. I was afraid the police had got hold of it. Another item of information I need, Miss Gladd seems to have received a message that took her to the place where I was waiting. She seems to think I sent it, but young Dundee seems to think you did. Did you?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“That’s a question,” Hicks said judiciously. “Miss Gladd and I conversed in her room and agreed to sneak out of the house separately and meet down the road where I had a car. While she was sitting in the car with Ross, who was apparently already in training for the role of D’Artagnan, a boy came with a message that had been phoned to his home, which was near by. It was signed ABC, meaning me, I suppose, and told her to drive to a certain spot and find me in a car with the license JV 28.”
“Ah,” Vail said.
“Right. Ah.”
The fat folds of Vail’s lids were leaving him no eyes at all. He murmured, “The message was phoned to a near-by house.”
“Correct. You may have time out to reflect on that if you—”
“I don’t need to reflect. The conclusion is obvious. You didn’t send the message, if for no other reason, because you didn’t know I was there in that car. I couldn’t have sent it, because I didn’t know where Miss Gladd was. Who did know where she was besides you? You say you conversed with her in her room. Could Brager have overheard you?”
“Brager?” Hicks’s eyes glittered. “Now you’re putting on speed. I didn’t see that one go by. Why Brager?”